


The Undiscovered Country

by Mithen



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Retirement, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Wayne comes back to Gotham, and Jim Gordon needs to figure out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
_Death,  
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn  
No traveller returns, puzzles the will..._

Three months after disarming a nuclear bomb, Jim Gordon came home from work to find a dead man on his couch.

Jim stopped in the living room door, staring at the man draped across his furniture. His eyes were closed, his clean-shaven face oddly vulnerable, looking younger than its thirty-nine years. One hand was dangling off the hideous paisley cushions, almost brushing the floor; the other was clutching a throw pillow to his chest like a teddy bear.

For a dead man, he seemed distinctly alive.

Jim watched his chest rise and fall exactly one hundred times before tossing his coat to land with a thump on Bruce Wayne's chest.

Bruce woke with a start, jolting up as if under attack before taking in the man in the doorway and relaxing slightly. He met Jim's eyes and a complicated mix of emotions flitted across his handsome, mobile face: chagrin, embarrassment, and then a touch of real pleasure, a wry smile. "Hello," he said.

Something twisted in Jim's chest at the sound of that pleasant, light, _normal_ voice; he looked away from Bruce's eyes and muttered, "Just couldn't stay away, could you?"

The smile flickered out. "It's not that," Bruce said. "The last three months have been...amazing." He shook his head slightly, not smiling, but close to it. "To wake up in the morning and not think 'Will this leg hold me up if I need to fight? Will someone die because I'm too slow now?' To be able to _enjoy_ things, not just see them as tools or props. To enjoy _myself_. No, Gotham doesn't need me, not like that, not anymore. I'm...free." His voice was touched with a kind of wondering awe, a dawning joy.

"So then, why are you back?" Jim said, and was surprised to hear bitterness in his own voice. "Not for old times' sake. I've only talked to Bruce Wayne twice in the last thirty years. I don't know a damn thing about you."

"I'm not Bruce Wayne anymore," the man on his couch said. "Evan Macintosh does a little securities freelancing, enough to get by."

"Well, I know even less about Evan Macintosh."

"Evan Macintosh is from Dubuque, Iowa," Bruce said. "Home schooled by his former-hippie parents. He majored in computer engineering in college. His first car was a navy-blue Chevrolet. He likes Hitchcock movies, blue jeans, and raspberry jam. He doesn't like green tea, the Beatles, or small dogs."

"Well, now I feel like I know you so well," Jim said sourly. "I suppose you like long walks on the beach and pina coladas as well."

"Evan Macintosh is more of a mojitos guy."

"Sounds like you put a lot of work into Evan Macintosh."

"I did." Bruce's grin was proud and proprietary, and Jim had a sudden vision of him scribbling at a desk, hunched in concentration, the Eiffel Tower outside the window lit by a gray dawn. "That's just the beginning. I've got him all figured out."

"Oh? What's Evan Macintosh's favorite Olympic sport?"

"Diving."

"Favorite Doctor?"

"Is that a reference to that British scifi show?" Bruce waved a hand dismissively. "Evan Macintosh doesn't like British television."

"What was his favorite vacation ever?"

"His family went to Disneyworld when he was eight," Bruce said without hesitation. "His parents disapproved of such capitalist frippery, but they did it for him. He got his picture taken with Mickey. All lost when his parents' house got flooded fifteen years ago, sadly."

"Celebrities he'd like to have sex with?"

"Audrey Hepburn or Gregory Peck circa 1950."

Jim blinked at the idea Bruce had reinvented himself as bisexual. _Or maybe he was always--_ He cut that thought off brusquely. "You still haven't answered my question," he said. "Why did you come back to Gotham?"

"I didn't come back to Gotham."

Jim shook his head in annoyance, but the man on his couch didn't elaborate, just turning his head away from him slightly. After a moment, he said, "Barbara left you."

"Yes. Can you blame her? What of it?"

"You...must have some experience in rebuilding yourself."

Whatever emotion Jim had been feeling--confusion, pity--shattered into something sharp-edged. "Rebuilding myself?" There was a snarl at the edges of his voice. " _Rebuilding_? Do you know what's in my refrigerator?" Bruce didn't respond to the apparent non-sequitur; Jim stalked to the kitchen and yanked open the door. "Let's see...a jar of mayonnaise, a bottle of ketchup, two chocolate bars, some beer, a carton of milk that expired last week and...one, two, three, four half-empty cartons of Chinese takeout." He glared at the direction of the living room and the unseen figure on his couch. " _Rebuild?_ All I've done since Barbara and the kids left is _work_ \--there isn't anything here in this apartment that's _me_ , it's all...leftovers," he finished dispiritedly, the pointless anger draining out of him. "I mean, that was my choice, I guess," he muttered.

Silence from the living room.

Jim shrugged even though Bruce couldn't see him. "Well, since you're here for whatever reason, you want a drink? No champagne, I'm afraid, but I've got that beer."

"Playboy Bruce Wayne liked champagne." The pleasant voice sounded slightly hollow. "Evan Macintosh drinks Amstel Light."

Jim snorted, moving aside the jar of mayonnaise and two takeout boxes to rummage. "I've got Old Milwaukee or Pabst Blue Ribbon," he called.

He waited for Bruce to answer; when there was no reply he stuck his head into the living room, holding the refrigerator door open with one foot. "I said--"

Bruce Wayne was still lying on the couch. His arms were wrapped around Jim's coat and he was staring up at the ceiling, a sharp little line between his eyebrows. He seemed to be pondering a question for which there was no answer, some ineffable enigma.

After a moment Jim let the refrigerator door swing shut. He went over to the couch and extricated his phone from his coat, which was still wrapped in Bruce's arms.

"Hello, Bess? Sorry to bother you. Do I have any vacation time saved up? No, that's not a joke." He listened for a moment, then made an affirmative sound and hung up.

"Bess says the mayor said that if I ever happened to ask for vacation time, I was to be told I have as much as I want," he said. Actually, the precise phrasing was if "the big damn hero who saved Gotham" ever asked for vacation time, but that seemed a ridiculous thing to repeat. He wandered into the bedroom and threw some clothes into a duffel bag, emerging to find Bruce still lying on his couch.

"Where are you going?" Bruce said.

"'Evan Macintosh' and I are going up north. I've got a little lake camp there, used to be my grandparents'." He had promised Barbara years ago he'd spend more time there with the family. He'd been there once in the last decade. He nudged the man on his couch with his duffel bag. "You're welcome to come along too, though."

After a moment Bruce sat up. He nodded and stood--favoring one leg, Jim noticed, and with the deliberate movements of a man long-used to pain.

Jim tossed the car keys at him. "It's about a seven hour drive. You want to take the first leg?"

Bruce looked down at the car keys, then lobbed them back. "Evan Macintosh hates city driving," he said.

"Yeah, well, Bruce Wayne wasn't any great shakes either," Jim said as he pulled open the front door and headed down the steps. "Running red lights, crashing Lamborghinis."

"You remember." Bruce's voice was pleased; Jim turned around to look at him but his face was in shadow and Jim couldn't see his expression.

"He wasn't the most forgettable person."

The early March air was still chilly; it took Jim's rattletrap Ford a while to warm up. He could see his breath faint in the air above the dashboard as he made his way toward the bridge: they'd gotten a second bridge open recently, but traffic was still horrible getting off and on the island.

"You haven't asked about Blake," he said after a while. "He quit the force, you know."

A non-commital sound from the man in the passenger seat. "Have you...been in touch with him?"

"I see him now and then." An awkward pause; the lights of Gotham played across the windshield. "He says he's almost ready."

"That's good." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bruce open his mouth, close it, open it again. Swallow. "He's a good man."

"Probably the second-best I've ever known."

Bruce turned away to look out at Robinson Park. "Me too," he said to the window.

"So what am I supposed to call you?" Jim asked as the traffic inched over the bridge, bumper-to-bumper in the dusk. "You going to be Evan from now on?"

"I don't mind if you call me Bruce." A soft sound, almost a chuckle. "You never have, you know."

"What?"

"Called me Bruce. It was all _Mr. Wayne_ the one time we met as adults." _And something else all the other times_ , the thought hung in the air between them like their breaths.

"Well then. Say goodbye to Gotham, Bruce," said Jim as they finally left the bridge for the mainland.

To his surprise, Bruce turned in his seat to look back at the city. "Goodbye, Gotham," he said. Then he turned back around and settled into his seat, his eyes on the road ahead of them. He was almost smiling, and it looked better on him than any smile Jim had ever seen Bruce Wayne give for the cameras.

Once out of the city, the traffic eased and soon the highway was mostly clear. The car was finally warming up; Jim set the cruise control as he merged onto the northbound lane.

A long way ahead of them still, and a lot of open road.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim and Bruce arrive at a cabin on the lake and start to re-orient themselves.

"--Hey. Hey." An urgent hand was shaking his shoulder, and Jim Gordon jolted awake, stifling a gasp. Outside the car window, a long dark line of pines hedged the night sky, and the tires sang on the highway.

"You were having a nightmare."

Jim looked away from Bruce Wayne's profile. "Nothing new there," he muttered. Fragments from the dream skittered through his mind. "Did I...say anything?"

"Not much." The shadowy pines outside inched along. A trailer truck went by on the other side, its headlights a sudden sweep of light that made Jim squint as if into an interrogator's light. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

Bruce snorted once, a grudging laugh. "Fair enough."

They drove on in silence as Jim sat up and rubbed his eyes, gazing blearily out the window. He hadn't even realized he was dozing off; he must have been more tired than he realized. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone to check his mail: three messages already, but only one had to be dealt with right now. The others could wait until the morning.

"This is supposed to be a vacation," Bruce said as Jim tapped at the screen.

Jim grunted. "As if you don't have a phone on you."

"I don't, actually." Bruce raised an eyebrow at Jim's look. "I'm on vacation. I wrapped up my last project before I left and am off the grid from now."

Jim finished the mail and tapped "send." "Well, you didn't get shanghaied without warning by a dead man," he grumbled. "Some of us still have work to do."

He didn't realize until the words were out how they might sound. They hung in the air between the two men and it was impossible to call them back. Bruce said nothing, and the silence stretched on. Jim fumbled for words until it was clearly too late to say anything graceful; finally he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep again, a sense of dislocated unreality creeping over him. Was it actually possible that he was in a car driving north with Batman? Maybe this was just another dream--he'd had dreams like this one before, ones where the Dark Knight stood before him with his own old coat draped around his armored shoulders and put out his hand and said--

\--Well, not exactly like this one, he supposed.

He slitted his eyes open just enough to look at Bruce Wayne's profile, lit by passing headlights. He was watching the road, his face impassive and alert. A cool, collected face: a face that had looked at death without blinking and moved on past it, beyond its reach. A man who had moved on.

So why had he come back to Gotham?

Lost in thought, Jim nearly missed it when Bruce Wayne's eyes flicked briefly to the passenger side of the seat, his brows drawn together for a moment. Bruce looked away again immediately, his eyes back on the road, but that for that one instant...

 _He has no idea what to say to me either,_ Jim realized. Somehow the thought made him feel better. He opened his eyes and stretched, blinking out the window. "We're almost there," he said as a sign flashed by. "Pull over at the next rest stop and I'll take over the driving."

However, it was after midnight by the time they turned into the rutted, pine-needle-strewn driveway of the Gordon lake camp--even later than Jim had expected, because it had taken him nearly an extra hour to find the camp among the maze of winding dirt roads that honeycombed the shores of the lake. The screen door creaked open and a dusty light bulb illuminated a kitchen with an ancient, rust-stained porcelain sink. The floorboards made weary noises under their feet as they went into the living room, slipcovered furniture like crouching animals in the dark. Jim stood in the middle of the living room and closed his eyes, hearing the hushed sound of the lake and the susurration of the wind in the trees. No sirens, no explosions, no chopping of helicopter blades.

He stood there, unsure what to do.

"It's quiet." Bruce's voice was muted as well; Jim turned his head to see him looking around the dark room, his head almost brushing the low ceiling.

"There are a couple of bedrooms upstairs," Jim said, reaching over and grabbing Bruce's meagre backpack. "We'd better hit the hay, I'd like to get up early tomorrow and see what needs fixing around here."

The March air was still brisk, and Jim stopped at the top of the rickety stairs to open the eaves and pull out a plastic bin. The pungent scent of mothballs wafted from the wool blanket he extricated and tossed to Bruce. "Let me know if you're still cold," he said, pointing to the tiny room with the double bed in it and opening the door to enter the even smaller room with the twin cot.

He changed into flannel pajamas, shivering a little, listening to the sounds of the man who had been Batman moving around the room just a few feet from him. An owl hooted softly in the pine trees. The sheets were cold, with a lingering clamminess that made his skin break out in gooseflesh. Rubbing his arms, he curled up on the cot, waiting for warmth to creep into his body.

"Good night, Jim," came a voice from beyond the wall, a few feet away.

Jim felt his lips twitch slightly. "Good night, John-Boy," he said.

"It's Evan now. But I'd rather you called me Bruce." Bruce's voice was completely serious, and Jim supposed he'd probably never had much time to watch _The Waltons_ anyway.

"Good night, Bruce," he corrected himself.

He wasn't sure how he could sleep with that vast silence hissing around him, but eventually he drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep, broken by fragments of nightmares, familiar and unnerving as old friends arriving without warning.

**: : :**

He woke, disoriented, to the sound of a harsh metallic cry outside the window and flecks of sunlight glinting in his eyes. Rubbing at his face, he pulled open the curtain the rest of the way and caught sight of a bright wing flashing, another sharp shriek. Blue jay.

Jim Gordon blinked at the morning sunlight for several minutes.

He avoided the creaky steps on the stairs through some long-forgotten muscle memory from childhood summers spent running up and down to the lake. The opened refrigerator door revealed an expanse of blank whiteness. "Note to self: pick up provisions _before_ going to camp," he muttered. Getting down on his hands and knees, he rummaged for the power cord and eventually got it into the wall. The refrigerator coughed, then hummed into life.

"Coffee, coffee," he muttered, going through cabinets. His search eventually produced a sealed tin of instant coffee and a battered teakettle. The sink sputtered and ran rusty water for a few minutes before eventually clearing enough to fill the kettle and get it onto the stove. As the water heated, Jim looked at his phone.

No signal. Of course.

He snagged the kettle before it started to whistle and moved it to a different burner. A spoonful of instant coffee in a chipped mug that read "Fryeburg Fair 1985" on the side: Jim took a sip and grimaced.

"Do I smell coffee?" Jim looked up the stairs to see Bruce's sneakers descending. He looked away when he realized that the steep, narrow stairs were giving him some trouble, one leg thumping stiff and unwieldy, and focused on the light on the lake outside the window until Bruce was standing next to him.

"Well, it's something close to coffee," Jim said, pouring him another mug. "The tap water won't be delicious, but it'll be okay for any pills you have."

"Pills?"

"You know, painkillers and stuff."

Bruce took a mouthful of coffee, swallowed. "Don't take any."

Jim stared. "You're joking."

A wry smile. "I've been reliably informed that I don't have much of a sense of humor. No, I don't take any. Don't trust them."

"All right, you're crazy. Or a masochist."

Bruce raised his eyebrows and pointed at him, a "eureka" gesture. "Now, _those_ I have been called." He shook his head and took another mouthful of coffee. "The amount I'd need to dull the pain isn't worth the risk of addiction," he said matter-of-factly. "I meditate, most mornings. It helps."

"You meditate."

A nod.

"Jesus Christ," Jim said with feeling, walking into the living room with his mug. He looked at his phone again. Still no signal. "I'm going down to the lake. Want to come?"

"Love to."

The morning was cool. Winter was still in the air, little piles of snow lingering in sheltered spots. The air smelled of lake water and pine needles. Jim glanced at his phone as they walked, but only at the edge of the water did he get even a weak signal. "Damn," he muttered. "Maybe at the end of the dock."

By the time they reached the end of the dock, their footsteps loud across the water, the signal had improved enough that he was able to download his email. He sat down cross-legged on the wooden planks to look it over and figure out what to answer.

Beside him, Bruce Wayne gingerly lowered himself into the lotus position and closed his eyes.

After answering two emails (a question about the entertainment for the policeman's ball and a querulous message from the city council chair) Jim sneaked a glance at Bruce, still motionless on the dock. His dark hair was falling in his closed eyes; he was wearing a black polo shirt and jeans. He looked entirely innocuous, but every now and then the slightest twinge of pain ghosted across his face.

Jim shifted his position until he was back to back with Bruce, letting their spines touch just a little. After a moment, Bruce relaxed slightly against him, letting Jim take a little of his weight.

They sat like that for a while, as the morning fog lifted off the lake. Two ducks drifted past, eyeing them with mild curiosity, and on the far shore Jim saw a fox slip down to the water's edge, then wend its way back into the brush. His phone buzzed briefly: another email from Councilman Watson reminding him he had to make his mind up soon about the election. He suppressed a sigh and started to compose a suitably vague response.

The spring morning brightened slowly around the two men, back to back, fighting their quiet personal battles.

**: : :**

Jim dodged a rotting plank as they walked back up the dock, looking up at the little cabin with its peeling red paint.

"This place is beautiful," said Bruce from behind him. "I didn't even know you had it."

"I've let it go," Jim muttered. "No time, I guess."

Inside, Bruce prowled around the cabin like a cat getting a feel for an unfamiliar and potentially hostile place, then settled onto the couch. He looked up at Jim. "Now what?"

"Now you...do whatever you like to do in your free time," Jim said, shrugging.

"Well," Bruce cast his eyes upward in thought. "For the last eight years, I mostly was working on cold fusion. Have you got some palladium and deuterium on hand?"

"Bruce, I don't even have chips and beer on hand." Jim sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Don't you have any idea what you like to do for _fun_?"

"What do _you_ usually do for fun?"

Jim blinked at him. Opened his mouth and closed it again. "Well, there's some books in storage," he said, opening up a plastic bin in the corner and scooping out an armful. "Dickens, Austen, Camus, Dante, the complete works of Shakespeare--hey, it's my Tolkien," he said, lifting out the hardcovers with reverence and putting them on the empty bookcase.

"Never read them."

"You've never read _Lord of the Rings?_ "

"I've never read any of those authors. Well, I had to read some Camus in high school, but after that I took classes mostly in applied engineering, physics, metallurgy. I skipped the extraneous stuff."

"Shakespeare isn't extraneous," Jim huffed.

"If you recommend him, I'll read it," Bruce said easily. "What have you read recently?"

"Do you like to work with your hands? I need to fix the dock and it would go faster with two people."

If Bruce noticed that he had dodged the question, he didn't show it. "I'd be happy to help, of course." He looked neither happy nor unhappy: there was an anticipatory air about him that might have been pleased or merely resigned.

"We'll need some materials: my grandfather's toolkit should be in the boathouse, but we'll need lumber, nails and stuff. Plus we need food. No take-out Chinese out here."

"Cooking." Bruce looked dubious. "I suppose it's necessary." He blinked like an owl, doubtful in the morning light, and Jim bit down on a sudden urge to laugh at the image of Batman--hard to believe he was truly the Dark Knight, this mortal man in jeans--so daunted by the idea of cooking.

"Yes," Jim said. "It is necessary." He clapped Bruce on the back without thinking and Bruce--didn't _flinch_ , but all of his attention focused on Jim in one instant, the quick unconscious movement of a wild animal touched suddenly.

Jim removed his hand and watched Bruce's shoulders relax.

"All right," he said, keeping his voice low and calm as if speaking to a restive horse. "Let's go."

"Where are we going?"

Jim felt his mouth twitch in something close to a smile. "Walmart."


	3. Chapter 3

Jim Gordon took a moment to savor the surreal sight of Bruce Wayne wheeling a shopping cart down a brightly-lit Walmart aisle. He was looking at the merchandise on the shelves as if at artifacts from some exotic new world--which might not be so far from the truth, Jim reflected.

"Is this any good?"

Jim looked at the plastic bottle Bruce was holding up. "I have no idea." Barbara had given him some Old Spice body wash years ago and he'd just kept buying that even after.

Bruce peered at the label and articulated as carefully if reading Sanskrit: "Aveeno Active Naturals Stress Relief Body Wash. With lavender, camomile, and ylang-ylang." He hoisted it, lifting an interrogative eyebrow at Jim. "Apparently it 'calms and relaxes while moisturizing the skin.'"

"Uh, sure, toss it in." A quick spin through the grocery section netted them staples and fruit, plus a stack of frozen pizzas at Bruce's insistence ("The only thing I know how to make.")

Back in the car, Jim paused in the parking lot to answer a couple more texts from work, his fingers cold and clumsy on the screen.

"I can't just drop my work," he said defensively, although Bruce hadn't said anything.

"Important stuff?"

"Yes," Jim said shortly, unwilling to admit that the texts had been about the painters coming to redo the headquarters' walls. His elite handpicked force seemed to be getting by without him just fine, he realized with a pang as he put the car into gear.

At Home Depot, they picked up boards, nails, and red paint. Jim watched Bruce as he wandered the aisles, his attention rapt in a way it hadn't been at Walmart. His hands lingered on wood and tile, brushed across sandpaper and aluminum. Jim remembered a little piece of metal retrieved from a crime scene almost a decade ago, its curves like wings, carefully carved into the titanium.

The tiny projectile still rested in a drawer back in Gotham: a memento of the first time Jim had ever tampered with a crime scene.

"See anything you like?" he said to Bruce, who was thumbing through handbooks on patio furniture.

"Do you think we could pick up the materials for this?" Bruce held up a how-to book, open to a page showing a porch swing.

Jim thought about telling Bruce that it was unlikely they'd be staying long enough for the weather to improve to the point where they could use a porch swing, but he looked at Bruce's face and stopped himself. "Sure, we can do that." He squinted at the list of requirements, and they went off to gather them up as well.

Soon they were driving back toward the lake house, the car redolent with the smell of fresh-cut wood. Jim felt his spirits rising as they drove: they had projects to do, things to keep themselves busy. Maybe some of the awkwardness would pass when they were working with their hands together--

A raindrop spattered on the window, then another. Soon the windshield wipers were going in a steady rhythm.

 _Let me guess, the forecast calls for rain all week,_ Jim thought bitterly. _Could this get worse?_

The drumming on the windshield changed in timbre, sharpening.

Sleet. Of course.

**: : :**

They got the lumber and paint into the boathouse and scuttled back to the cabin as bits of ice showered down around them. The pine branches were already groaning under the weight, clashing against each other like furious chandeliers. Inside, the lights flickered but held steady, to Jim's relief.

"Could you chop up an onion? I'll make us a couple of omelets."

It became clear within moments that Bruce had never chopped an onion in his life, but he approached it with a sort of intense technicality, as if he were defusing a bomb rather than mincing a vegetable. Eventually the onion was reduced to a pile of perfectly even pieces and Jim slid them into the skillet to join the butter and garlic. Soon the cabin filled with the homey scent of cooking food.

"This is good," Bruce said in between bites, sounding surprised enough that Jim considered taking offense. A gust of wind rattled icy branches against the window, and the lights flickered again. "Doesn't look like we'll be fixing that pier anytime soon," he added.

"I guess not. The weather's pretty unpredictable up here."

"Good thing we've got some books." He smiled slightly. I'll get caught up on my Shakespeare."

The wind was still howling in the morning, bitter drafts slipping through the window frames and curling around the corners of the cabin. They ate breakfast and watched the morning news on the flickering little television--Gotham seemed to be holding up all right. After the dishes were done (Jim washing, Bruce meticulously drying), Bruce claimed one end of the sofa, frowning at _Romeo and Juliet_ ("a couple of ninnies"), then nodding appreciatively at _As You Like It_. Jim picked up _Lord of the Rings_ and began to re-read in turn, losing himself in the cadences of the language, the sweeping scope of the world.

_The Road goes ever on and on_  
Down from the door where it began.  
Now far ahead the Road has gone,  
And I must follow, if I can,  
Pursuing it with weary feet... 

Bruce insisted on taking his turn in the kitchen that evening, thawing out one of the frozen pizzas. He put it on the table with a flourish. "I took the liberty of adding oregano," he said with some pride, then raised an eyebrow at Jim. "Glaring at it isn't going to improve the signal," he said.

Jim tossed the phone onto the couch with a growl. "If I had known this cabin was in a dead spot, I never would have come. The only place that works is the end of the dock." He took a bite of scalding-hot pizza. "After supper I'm going to see if I can drive somewhere I can get a signal."

"Is there some emergency?"

"Sort of," Jim muttered, relieved when Bruce let the matter drop. He washed the dishes then grabbed the car keys off the hook by the door. He half-expected Bruce would follow him to the door, and found himself oddly surprised when Bruce went back to his sofa and picked up his book.

"I'll be here when you get back," Bruce said.

"Oh. Okay," Jim muttered, then let himself out into the storm.

It took a depressingly long drive until he found a pocket of coverage, enough to pull to the side of the road and check his mail. Three from Councilman Watson; Jim sighed and answered one as vaguely as possible. There was also one from his secretary about the yearly budget, and one from John Blake: _Heard you were taking some time off. Will do my best to hold down the fort. Wish me luck._ Jim hesitated for a long time on that one, then answered it with just _Good luck._

The sleet rattled on the windshield, pine needles clattering on the hood as overloaded branches shuddered. Outside the darkness crouched, eyeing him. His breath steamed in front of him. He put his forehead on the steering wheel rather than look back at the darkness.

After a while he made his limbs move to put the car into gear and wind his way back to the cabin.

When he opened the door, chocolate-scented warm air fogged his glasses opaque. "I made some cocoa," Bruce's voice explained as he pulled his glasses off and cleaned them, squinting.

The cabin was warm and bright, ignoring the darkness outside. Jim wrapped his hands around the mug Bruce pushed into his hands, letting the heat chase the tremors from his fingers.

**: : :**

The next morning, Bruce woke before he did; Jim came downstairs to find him with a bit of wood and a jackknife in his hands. He turned it over to show Jim the carved spine, curving.

"A bat?"

Bruce flashed him a wry grin. "Too obvious, don't you think?" He bent back to his work, the knife caressing the wood.

Jim watched him for a moment, then pulled out his phone again, as if looking at it would somehow breathe a signal into life. The phone remained inert, a mute oblong of plastic and metal. With his other hand, he pulled open the curtain, glaring out at the loose granular snow being lashed around by the wind. "We're going to get cabin fever," he grumbled.

"There's a lot to do," Bruce said. He shrugged when Jim shot him an annoyed look. "I've gotten good at finding a lot to do with a little."

"What exactly is there to do in a cabin in the woods in early March in a storm?"

"Well, beyond whittling--" Bruce put down the little wooden animal, "--We've got a pile of books, some notebooks and pens, a television, cards and a cribbage board--"

"--You know how to play cribbage?"

"Alfred taught me when I was a boy," Bruce said with a small smile, and Jim had a sudden image of the solemn boy he had met once sitting across the table from a younger Alfred, struggling to hold all his cards in his small hands. "I haven't played in...a very long time, though."

"Me neither. Shall we try it?"

They turned out to be equally inept at the game, which made for well-matched play. The little pegs moved back and forth across the board, jumping over each other, looping back and forth and going nowhere, always returning to where they began. "How do you do it?" Jim heard himself say.

"Well, a lot depends on finding the right cards to discard to the crib--"

"--I don't mean cribbage," Jim said with a glare. "I mean..." He trailed off, uncertain exactly what he _did_ mean.

Bruce shuffled the cards again, watching them interlace. Then he put them down. "I was ready to die," he said, his voice low. "I was bleeding, I was piloting the bomb out of the city, and I was ready to die. To give everything for Gotham. It was...a transcendent feeling. Everything had led to that moment. It was the end of my life, I was sure of it. I knew the autopilot system was fixed, but I couldn't think of a reason to activate it. It seemed...the most simple ending. Almost elegant."

"But you did activate it," Jim said when it seemed that Bruce wasn't going to continue. "You...found a reason."

Bruce picked up the cards, tapped them on the table. "Yes," he said. "I did."

He dealt Jim a new hand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Jim and Bruce weather a cold Northeastern spring, Batman returns to Gotham, and both of them are forced to consider their options.

The next day, after the morning news and a half-hour meditation, Bruce returned to his Shakespeare and Jim to his Tolkien. The sleet and snow had stopped, but the wind was scudding across the lake in small whitecaps, the sky still dark and gray. Jim was still feeling twitchy, wondering if he should drive out again to where he could get a signal and check his mail, but the warmth and companionable silence of the cabin were difficult to leave. He was finishing up Merry and Pippin meeting the Ents when Bruce put down the book and went to the window, looking out. When he didn't come back to his chair, Jim picked up the book and opened it to the bookmark: the end of _The Tempest_.

"Interesting play," Bruce said, still looking out at the gray sky. "Prospero, giving up his magic forever, returning to the world as a normal man." He chuckled slightly, not looking at Jim. "Do you think he found it hard? Going on?"

"Probably," Jim said.

"I don't want another frozen pizza," Bruce said, letting the curtain drop. "Show me how to make something else."

They made pasta bolognese. Bruce cut the onions again, and even branched out to stirring the sauce as it simmered.

**: : :**

That evening, they turned on the late-night news to find the news anchor with a manic gleam in his eye. Before he even said anything, Jim felt Bruce's muscles tense.

"Tonight, WGBS has exclusive footage that would seem to confirm that the Batman, presumed dead these last three months, is once again working in Gotham."

The video was blurry: a cell phone camera in heavy shadows. But for a brief moment, the unmistakable silhouette--predator's ears against the moon--was clear for all to see.

The dark figure plummeted into the night and left behind three men trussed up and hanging from gargoyles.

The anchor was saying something else, but Jim was aware only of Bruce beside him, breathing very carefully, as though he had been struck in the ribs. Or deeper. "Are you okay?" Jim asked after a moment.

Bruce inhaled, held it, let it out again. "Was I that..."

"...Awe-inspiring?"

A gust of laughter that trembled a little. "I would have said melodramatic."

"You always were. Both, I mean. You still are," Jim said, the words clumsy in his mouth.

The screen cut elsewhere, saving Jim before he could say anything else stupid. "Acting Commissioner Sawyer," said the reporter, shoving a microphone up to her face, "What's the word on the Batman?"

Maggie Sawyer looked as if she were resisting the temptation to slap the microphone out of the way. "The GCPD is looking into the situation."

"Is there still a warrant for his arrest?"

"Everyone knows," Sawyer enunciated carefully, "That Batman died saving Gotham from terrorists. Therefore, this is a different person. We have no warrant for this person's arrest at this time."

"All of which," the WGBS's "expert criminologist" intoned from a different window as Sawyer stalked away from the camera, "Is Sawyer's way of dodging the question and letting Batman off the hook, obviously. And I think I speak for all the citizens of Gotham when I say, 'Welcome back, Batman!'"

A commercial started playing, something about incontinence pads, because only old people still watched the evening news. Bruce turned off the television and stood up, stretching. A chorus of crackling joints echoed through the living room. "I think I'll take a shower and head to bed," he said.

That night, Jim came alert from a deep sleep at a sound, a muffled cry. It came again, and Jim found himself at the door of Bruce's tiny room. Bruce twisted under the covers, making the small noises that mark shouts in nightmares, his arms flung up as if to ward something off.

"Bruce," Jim said, taking his shoulders in his hands. "Wake up."

With a gasp, Bruce opened his eyes, wild and dark with apparitions. "Where's--where's the--"

"You're not in Gotham," said Jim. "No one is in danger here. You don't need to save anyone. It's okay." He held on to Bruce, murmuring reassurance until the panic went out of his eyes, until his muscles relaxed and his face was lucid again.

"How did you know?" Bruce muttered, turning his face away. "What I was dreaming."

Jim's hands were still on Bruce's shoulders; he shook them slightly. "What else would you be dreaming of?" he scoffed.

"It could have been--Bane," Bruce said into the pillow.

"That's not what terrifies you," said Jim.

Instead of responding, Bruce grimaced and reached down to touch his legs. "Charley horse," he said.

Jim reached under the blanket and grabbed his calf, sliding the pajama leg up. "My father used to get those." He dug his knuckles in, kneading, and Bruce hissed. "He taught me how to get the spasms to die down. Just lie still."

He could feel coarse hair under his fingers, and a jagged scar with raised and puckered flesh, hard-edged. Bruce had closed his eyes, wincing now and then, and silence fell in the little cabin, broken only by gusts of wind.

"Councilman Watson wants me to run for mayor," Jim heard himself say into the hush.

Bruce's eyelids flickered. "Really?"

"There's a lot of support for the idea."

"A lot of pressure, you mean."

Jim dug his fingers into the scarred flesh and Bruce made a sound somewhere between pain and satisfaction. "I guess."

"You don't want to be mayor of Gotham."

"I didn't want to be _commissioner_." Jim was distantly surprised at the vehemence in his own voice. "I only fell into it because everyone else qualified was _dead_ and there was a madman on the loose and someone had to take charge."

"You're good at it."

"Good at going to functions? At filling out paperwork?"

"At leading your men and women. At inspiring them."

"At lying to them."

Now Bruce's eyes were open and he was glaring at Jim. "Your people didn't follow you because of a lie. They followed you because they believed in a better Gotham, they wanted to make that dream a reality. And you--all of you-- _did it._ " He banged the blanket with a fist. "Gotham is a better place because of all you gave up, all you did for it. You stepped up when you needed to and you hired the best in the world to protect the city. You lost your freedom and your time--damn it, Jim, you lost your _family_ \--and now they want to kick you upstairs to be mayor?"

Jim looked away. "It's an honor."

"It's a death sentence for a man like you. Haven't you given enough?"

Jim realized he was still holding on to Bruce's leg, that he had stopped kneading the muscles at some point. He started again. "The GCPD can get by without me now. Maggie's the right person for the job, I've known it for a long time. She shouldn't have to work in my shadow. And I can help people more by--"

"--Jim, listen to me. You can't let them do this to you." Bruce sat up in bed with a struggle, yanking his leg away. "You deserve to have a life of your own."

"I want to help people."

"This is not the way! Life in politics will eat you up inside, I know it will."

Jim felt himself bristle. "Are you saying I'm too soft?"

"I'm saying you're too _good._ You'll come to hate yourself."

"I already--"

The words cut off as Bruce's hand clapped across his mouth, not gently. "Don't say that," Bruce rasped. "Don't ever say that."

Their eyes remained locked over Bruce's hand, a look that wasn't quite a glare. After a long moment, Bruce pulled his hand back. "Thank you for the massage," he said, not sounding terribly grateful. "And for waking me up."

It was a dismissal; Jim stood up. "No problem. See if you can get some sleep."

He was at the door when Bruce's voice stopped him. "By the way, you're wrong."

Jim couldn't help chuckling. "About what specifically?"

"When you woke me up, you told me there was no one I still had to save."

Jim looked back at Bruce, but he had rolled over onto his side and away from him once more.

**: : :**

The days fell into a rhythm: they'd wake up and watch the morning news while eating breakfast (messy, earnest omelets or pancakes when Jim was cooking, Pop-Tarts when it was Bruce), then do odd jobs around the cabin, as it was still too cold to work outside: fixing pipes, scrubbing woodwork. Just before lunch Jim would walk out to the end of the dock, shivering in the cold, to check his mail with numb fingers. In the afternoon they'd usually read; sometimes Bruce would whittle, adding another little wooden animal to his collection. The evenings were taken up with cribbage or whist and the late-night news, watching breathless news reporters update the East Coast about the Batman. Maggie Sawyer showed up often, brusque and efficient, to answer questions.

If anyone was concerned about when Jim Gordon would return to work, they didn't show it.

For a few days it warmed up until it almost felt like spring, although their breaths still smoked in the air as they cleaned the gutters of rotting pine needles and cleared some underbrush. They walked out on the dock, checking which planks needed to be replaced. Far off on the lake, a loon howled like a lost soul, and Bruce shivered, hunching his shoulders in his down jacket.

"We'll get these fixed up and then get to work on the porch swing," Jim said, although he wasn't at all sure they could finish it before he would have to return to Gotham. He hadn't decided yet when he would be doing that--if there were some emergency he would head back immediately, of course.

So far Blake and Sawyer didn't seem to need his help, however.

He pulled out his phone when they reached the end of the dock, grimacing when he saw a new mail from Councilman Watson. "I have to give him an answer," he muttered.

Bruce plucked the phone from his hand, ignoring his protest. His fingers tightened on it, and for a moment Jim thought he was going to hurl it into the lake. But he just sighed and returned it to Jim, shaking his head. "It's your decision," he muttered, looking out over the lake.

"I'll tell him tomorrow."

Bruce shivered again. "There's another storm coming."

"The forecast didn't say anything."

"I can feel it." He looked at Jim, his face abstracted. "In my bones."

As it turned out, Bruce Wayne's bones were more reliable than the meteorologist, because the next morning the temperature had dropped again and sleet was hammering against the windows. Jim paced the room, holding his phone and glaring out at the storm. "I've really got to get this email out."

Bruce looked up from his book. "What are you going to tell him?"

"Running for mayor is the next logical step," Jim muttered. "I don't have any choice."

"You always have a choice," Bruce said, and looked back down at his book.

Jim couldn't read, couldn't relax. The mail was written, it was sitting in drafts, he had to send it _today_. He couldn't put it off any longer, couldn't keep shirking his responsibilities and sitting in a cabin reading and enjoying life with--with a friend. No matter how good it felt to just do the little chores that kept life moving ahead, no matter how much he enjoyed discovering that he liked Fitzgerald and disliked Hemingway, that he could make good omelets but his French toast was abysmal, like he was finding something lost and buried for years.

No matter how much he wanted to fall asleep hearing Bruce Wayne's breaths nearby at the end of a day together.

"I'm going out to the dock," he announced, grabbing his parka.

"What? But--" Bruce gestured out the window at the howling storm.

"I have to get this mail out, damn it." He pulled up his hood and left before Bruce could say anything more.

The wind buffeted him as he made his way down the icy stairs to the lake, needles of sleet stinging his face. He got out his phone as he stepped onto the dock, fumbling with the screen, looking at the signal meter. He'd just get a signal and hit _send_ and that would be it, he'd be committed. He could probably even win the election, he was apparently a hero of some sort in Gotham. He'd be mayor by the beginning of next year. He'd be back in the city where he should be, glad-handing supporters and sitting in committees and--

He felt the rotten plank give way under his foot with a wrench and then there was nothing but icy air and icy shock.

His head connected with something, an explosion of light and sound behind his eyes, and when he gasped there was water in his throat and his nose, he couldn't tell which way was up anymore. It was strangely silent underwater, only his own heart hammering and a very distant sound like someone shouting. He tried to orient himself, to move toward the dim and snow-washed light, trying not to breathe any more water through his ice-burned lungs.

It was very quiet, and he realized there was a good chance he might die here, and little reason not to.

And then something grabbed him by the back of the jacket, yanking him out of that silent moment and into a maelstrom of howling wind and lashing waves and Bruce Wayne yelling his name. But there was air in his lungs again, and he could tell which way was up. Bruce's face was a pale blur broken with two dark hollows, he was saying something but Jim couldn't seem to make it out over the wind and his own racking coughs. They floundered toward the shore; Jim's numb feet slipped on the rocky ground and he went down in the water again, almost dragging Bruce with him, but Bruce braced his feet and pulled him to the shore, where they collapsed on the pebbly strand, icy waves still licking at their sodden clothes.

"Get you inside," Bruce said. His teeth were chattering. "Get you warm. Come on. You can do it." He kept talking, short phrases like rungs of a ladder that Jim could cling to and drag himself up the hill back to the cabin, back to light and warmth.

He stood in the middle of the living room, dazed and blinking, water running down his legs and pooling on the floor. Everything was hazy and blurred--he'd lost his glasses. Bruce was fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, he'd grabbed a towel and was drying his hair and torso. "Rub the chest," he said and Jim realized he couldn't stop shivering. "The arms will take care of themselves." He dabbed at Jim's forehead. "Head wound. They bleed a lot. They look worse than they are. Look worse than they are," he murmured. He didn't seem to be talking to Jim. "Oh God."

Soon he was sitting on the edge of his bed, wrapped in their warmest blanket, his feet sticking out of the bottom, pale and blue-veined. There was gauze wrapped around his head. Bruce pulled him forward a little and Jim felt something warm settle around his shoulders: Bruce's down jacket. Bruce pulled it more tightly around him; Jim could see the faint blur of his mouth curving, a distant smile.

"Jim," he said, "Don't...don't scare me like that." His voice and smile wavered, his hands tightening on the lapels of the coat. He leaned forward and rested his head on Jim's shoulder and Jim could feel him trembling.

"I'm sorry," was the only thing he could think of to say. He put his arms around Bruce, unsure if he was the comforter or the comforted, and they sat there for a long, quiet moment.

Then Bruce suddenly stood up. "Hold on," he said, and disappeared, leaving Jim blinking at the hazy light, holding the down jacket around himself. The world seemed very far away and small. Shock, perhaps, a part of his mind supplied.

Fifteen minutes later, Bruce returned, breathing heavily and freshly soaked. "Got them," he said, holding up a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Jim settled them on his nose and the world sprang back into focus around Bruce's worried face. "Um," said Bruce, and held up a little oblong. "I got this too, but..."

Jim took the phone from him, looking at the water patterns like lichen under the blackened screen. Drops oozed from the silent, dark rectangle.

"I'll put it in with some rice," Bruce was saying. "I hear that can draw the moisture out and--"

"--It's all right."

"What?"

Jim handed the phone back to Bruce. "Let it go," he whispered. The room kept tilting sideways, and it finally tipped a little too far.

He felt Bruce's hands on his feet, swinging his leaden body onto the bed, pulling a second blanket over it. His glasses were eased off his face, and Jim held onto the edges of the jacket as if he were afraid someone might take it away.

"Get some sleep," said Bruce's voice.

"I figured it out," Jim said. "Why you came back to Gotham."

A short silence. "Did you?"

Jim let go of the jacket and caught Bruce's hand in his like a lifeline. "Yes."

Bruce's cold fingers tightened on his. "Good."

"Don't leave me," Jim muttered.

His voice was blurry with fatigue in his ears and he wasn't sure if Bruce would understand him, but after a moment he felt the bed tilt with a new weight.

"Never," said Bruce.

Jim held Bruce's chilled fingers in his, warmth returning to them as slowly and surely as the spring. He felt the steady pulse of life beneath his fingers, and he held on and let Bruce lift him past the cold and silence, onward to that undiscovered country, knowing that his dark knight would never let him go.

**: : :**

Bruce finished carving the second tusk on the little wooden boar in his hands. A quick flurry of strokes to create a hairy texture, and the carving was done. He put it on the porch railing next to the other eleven animals.

"That's the whole zodiac," he said, dusting off his hands and settling down next to Jim on the porch swing. The sun was setting over the lake, long orange ribbons of light stretching across the water like a road leading to the west.

"Mm," Jim said, taking a sip of his coffee. "What's next? Will you loop back around to the beginning?"

"No," said Bruce with an elaborate shudder. "I'll be stepping off that karmic wheel, thank you."

The June air was anything but chilly, but Jim decided to misinterpret Bruce's shudder and move closer, until their legs were touching. Bruce smiled and kicked the ground enough to set the swing swaying a bit, gazing out at the lake.

"What _is_ next?" Jim said after a reflective silence. The deck was fixed, every odd job completed. The cabin's store of books were read, and they had taken to raiding the local library for more reading material. Bruce was now able to cook pasta bolognese and beef stew. There was even a straggling border of pansies and marigolds lining the path to the lake.

Also, one of the upstairs beds had remained unslept-in for a long time now, and Jim still found himself breaking out in a grin at random moments when he remembered that fact.

Bruce made a thoughtful humming noise. "I hadn't really planned much further--no, really," he protested as Jim snorted.

"We can't just stay up here in the woods forever."

"Would it be so bad?" Bruce's voice was a touch wistful, but he shook his head. "I know. Neither of us is really the kind of person to just retire to do gardening and read books for the rest of their life." He took one of Jim's hands in his and kicked the swing back into motion once more. "Whatever we do with our lives, though, it's our choice. Not someone else's."

Until recently, Jim had never realized that the plural pronoun could be so delightful. "Does Evan Macintosh need a partner?"

"Evan Macintosh thought you'd never ask," Bruce said, with an oddly shy smile. "You can deal with clients, while I can be the reclusive technical genius. White hats, of course. Security systems for libraries, museums. Women's shelters."

"Not too much money in that," Jim said lightly.

"But we'll have each other." Bruce's tone managed to be ironic and sincere at the same time. "My only request is..." He hesitated a moment. "No Gotham jobs." He looked away from Jim. "It's just easier that way."

"Is that possible? Gotham is...not an easy city to walk away from."

"It's necessary," said Bruce.

If Jim noted that "possible" and "necessary" were not mutually exclusive, he decided that now was not the time to mention it.

Bruce was looking at him again, that wry look on his face once more that made Jim's heart turn over. _What are the odds,_ that look said, _That we'd both be alive and together? What were the chances?_

"Besides," Bruce said, "I've found that being dead increases one's options exponentially."


End file.
